


Like A Phoenix Stained With Blood

by GalacticHalfling



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Blood Magic, But written as a setting unspecific stand alone, Dark, Gen, Genetic Disorder, Human Sacrifice, Inspired by Dragon Age, POV First Person, Please don't repost without permission, Self-Harm, Slavery, Terminal Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24204514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalacticHalfling/pseuds/GalacticHalfling
Summary: How far would you go to make sure you can live?Aurelia has found her answer to that question.(The tags say it all.)





	Like A Phoenix Stained With Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for beta reading goes to my local writers' group. Non of us are English native speakers though, so if we missed any mistakes feel free to point them out.  
> Thoughts and critique are welcome.  
> The characters, their deeds, and the setting do not correspond with my world view or morality. Though with the tags that should hopefully be obvious.

The neat glyphs, numbers, and geometrical patterns started blurring before my eyes from staring at them too long. Or maybe from the panic. I realized that I was gripping the stack of papers so hard that it crumpled under my fingers. I tried to relieve my grip with moderate success. My heart was pounding painfully against my frail ribs and I felt light headed, as if I wasn't getting enough air.

'I have to calm down. I need to focus. How am I going to do this if I'm already panicking before I've even started?' I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to even my breathing. I couldn't, and it sent a new, blinding spike of fear through my body. Was this the beginning of another seizure? I couldn't have one now! There was no one with the healing skills to help me - everyone was out, I had made sure of that. No, it wasn't a seizure - there was no pain, no cramps. Just the panic. 'I have to calm down. Or I will overexert myself with the emotions alone.'

Once more I tried to focus on my calculations. I knew them by heart already. But right now my mind seemed to have become blank, only filled with fear. "Containment sequence of the 3rd order," I whispered, reading out the first line of writing in my notes. "Glyph of Fortitude. Repeated anticlockwise 5 times every twenty degrees. ...every twenty degrees. Barrier equation..." I kept stumbling over the symbols.

A hand was laid on my notes, obscuring them from view. "Would you like to sit down and take your time, hera?" Ciaran stood in front of me, his eyes downcast and his tone respectful as befitting his station, but we both knew that he wasn't really inquiring after my needs - he was telling me what I needed. My mother would have had him whipped had she known about his presumption. But my parents weren't here, and they hadn't been there for me half as much as Ciaran had, so I couldn't care less what they thought of any of this.

"No one is going to look for us until at least tomorrow morning. You can take all the time you need. Just sit down," he took my arm, and I let him guide me to sit on the warm tile floor. "I may be just an old servus, but in my time I've seen a lot of mages who thought greatly of their skills. None of them had anything on you. You will do this flawlessly. You will live."

I drained the cup of tea that Ciaran had procured for me. His simple wisdom had held true: Taking my time did help. I wasn't certain why. I was still afraid of the pain that was to come, still afraid of the horrifying things I would have to do, still afraid that it wouldn't work or that I would slip up and make some mistake that would turn the ritual into some horrible catastrophe. But despite all that fear an eerie calm had settled over my mind. Maybe a human being simply wasn't capable of remaining so high-strung for a prolonged time. Maybe my broken body had some useful instincts after all and had calmed down before the panic could kill it. I didn't dwell on it too much. I felt ready to begin; I would do so before my resolve left me again.

With a sharp gesture I set the cup on the floor and stood. I picked up my stack of papers, leafing through them until I found the sheets that held the blueprints for the ritual array. I discarded the other notes and spread the blueprint pages on the ground in front of the floor-length mirror that hung at one of the bathroom walls. Then I opened the clasps that held my dress. Behind me Ciaran quickly turned away. It was the respectful thing to do of course, though it was nothing more than a gesture. I would need his help with sketching out the glyphs on my back anyway. For a moment I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My thin, colorless hair, my bulging forehead and watery, too big eyes. The lips I could only close with great effort over horse-like teeth. My too-short, spindly arms, the ribs that twisted in ways that gave my lungs barely enough room to breathe at all. My legs with too short thighs and too long shins. I had more than once been told that there were abominations who looked prettier than me. To say it didn't sting would have been a lie, but I knew how to wear my ugliness with dignity. It were the faults that lay beneath my skin that I feared and hated. My insides were just as mismatched as the outside. Dooming me to die before I had truly lived. Not an illness. Nothing that a healer could set right. No, I was broken by nature's design.

I was not taking this lying down. Maybe I could not be healed - but I could be remade. I would rise above nature's cruel imperfection whatever the cost.

I nodded at my own mirror image, satisfied to once more see the grim determination that had driven me through the years of my desperate research. I picked up the brush and the jar with paint that I had mixed specifically for this occasion - the pigment was neither poisonous nor would it remain visible for long should it enter under the skin. I began sketching out the intricate designs and calculations that were necessary for the ritual, starting in my face. This was the easy part, it required patience, accuracy and attention to detail, but it was harmless, calming even. Not much different from the ritual preparations that I had done while studying at the Circle - though back then I had never painted ritual arrays on my own skin. The hard parts - the painful parts - would come afterwards.

I had double-checked all the lines and symbols on my skin. Triple-checked them even. The sketch covering my body was perfect to the last detail. Circles and glyphs, equations and lines and angles running from the top of my freshly shaven head to my fingertips and toes. Ciaran had smiled and consoled me as he cut my wispy hair off as if it had ever been some mark of beauty that I would miss. He had always been like this, even in my earliest memories, treating me as if I was as beautiful as any other child with nothing to hide or feel ashamed of. He was the one person who had always been there for me. That's why I had chosen him to help with my ritual. He was the only one whose help would be enough. And yet it made it so much more terrible that it was HIM who was here with me. My throat felt constricted by the thought. I swallowed hard. No more doubts. I would do this. I would live.

"Give me the dagger," I ordered, my voice almost steady. Ciaran laid the hilt of the ornate ritual blade into my outstretched hand. It was an ancient family heirloom, enchanted to always retain a razor's edge and to never gather rust or grime. Technically it was supposed to sit in a chest in my father's study. But father was out on some social function, and clearly didn't need the dagger at the moment. I weighed the tool in my hand, building up the courage to start the ritual for real. The panic threatened to swallow me once more, I pushed it back and, stepping closer to the mirror, raised the dagger to my face.

Behind me I could see Ciaran watching me, eyes full of fear and sympathy, but an encouraging smile on his lips.

"Here goes nothing," I said aloud. Before I could doubt any more, I let the tip of the dagger touch my skin and began retracing the intricate patterns on my face, careful not to stray from the pre-drawn lines, careful to cut just deep enough to draw blood.

The blade was so sharp that I couldn't even feel the cuts. Seeing the lines drawn by the blade slowly turn red until drops of blood formed and began flowing over my cheeks and sensing the slow, trickling build-up of potential power released by the injuries felt strangely detached without the pain. Still, I was thankful as it helped me keep my hands steady. Line for line, glyph for glyph I continued, all the time careful to focus only on the next cut. Not on the wide stretches of skin that were still whole but had to be carved into as well for the ritual to work. The painlessness didn't last. After a few minutes the cuts started to sting and burn, aggravated by every twitch of a muscle. I kept going. Cut after cut edging the parameters of the spell into my body and drawing the energy of my own spilled blood inwards, channeling it into the slowly building ritual matrix. The pain of the different wounds soon blurred together into a haze of agony. I had started crying at some point, the salty tears burning on my bleeding cheeks. I kept working in a trance-like state. At some point the light-headedness returned. This time it wasn't panic, all feelings had been washed away by the all-encompassing pain, it was probably the blood loss. I could only guess at the amount I had lost going by the magical energy swirling barely under my control. I tried to stand up after edging out the patterns on my feet and almost fell, momentarily blacking out. Ciaran caught me, gripping my still unmarked right arm. I waited for the blackness to recede before I continued with the symbols on my forehead. The world became a red haze as blood dripped over my eyebrows into my eyes. I was breathing unnaturally fast. It was probably only the magic coursing through me like a storm that was keeping me upright by that point.

I handed the dagger to Ciaran. For a moment he just stood there, staring at me, eyes full of horror and pity. "Do it!" I bit out. And dear, dear Ciaran nodded slowly before walking behind me, continuing my work were I couldn't reach. I hadn't thought that the ordeal could become worse. But breaking out of the morbid trance of carving my own flesh let the pain and exhaustion crash over me like a wave. All I could do was try to remain as still as possible and keep hold over the magical energies. I was probably screaming and whimpering, I hardly noticed. Every second was stretching into eternity.

Finally, Ciaran returned the dagger to me. Only with great force of will did I manage to clasp my bleeding fingers around it. "Shall I go and wait outside?" Ciaran asked, his voice distant in my haze of pain and blood-loss. "Or is there anything I can do for you, hera?"

This was the moment. Even my half delirious state did not save me from the heart-wrenching guilt and dread stabbing through me with a sort of agony entirely different from the thousands of cuts littering my body. "There is one more thing," I pressed out, words slurred. There was no going back. With the ritual half-finished I was dying - not maybe dying in a month or a year - but right now, bleeding out in the bathroom. I wanted to live, so badly, that was the reason for the whole ordeal. I had to finish the ritual.

Slowly I turned towards Ciaran. Pulling on all my waning strength I raised the dagger as quickly as I could. Everything around me was blurring but I could see Ciaran's eyes clearly as they widened in realization. He didn't move to stop me. He didn't move to escape.

The dagger sliced through his throat with hardly any resistance. I latched onto his dying body's life force, adding it to the swirling vortex of power coursing through my veins. The current of raw energy kept me on my feet long enough that I could push all the magic into the ritual matrix, triggering the spell.

Then my knees gave way under me and I fell to the ground. I felt as if I was being torn apart from the inside, as if liquid fire had ignited in my bones, spreading and incinerating me. White-hot pain, greater than anything I had endured beforehand exploded through my entire being.

The last thing I heard before the world vanished into nothingness were my own screams.

I came to with my cheek pressed to the warm tile floor, sprawled out naked as I had fallen. The smell of dried blood hung faintly in the air. The lamps had burned out at some point but light was streaming through the stained glass windows. It had to be some hours past sunrise then.

There was a terrified squeak coming from the door. I jumped to my feet, turning around, only to stumble over my legs and fall down once more. Still, apart from the stumbling the whole movement had been blessedly painless and somehow smoother than I had ever experienced.

"Who... are you?" the person at the door asked. It was my brother. He was staring at me, wide eyed, looking only seconds from breaking out into noisy tears or running away.

For a moment I was struck dumb by the question. Marcus certainly wasn't the smartest six-year-old I knew, but he wouldn't just forget his own sister from one day to the next! Then it clicked and I instinctively ran my hands over my face. My hands, which were smooth and long fingered, and big enough to cover my face from chin to eyebrows. My face, which felt foreign without producing teeth and with a straight forehead and eyes that weren't the seize of a 10-drake coin. It had worked! Of course I would have to run a set of proper diagnostics to be entirely sure. But the ritual had really worked! I wasn't just still alive - I was better! The whole ordeal had not been in vain! At that thought I realized that I was still sitting in a room with blood stains and a dead body - while my six-year-old brother was watching. O scelera! There was a reason I had ordered his governess to keep him away from this part of the house. But that had been yesterday and clearly she hadn't thought to continue doing so today. What to do now?

"Marce, it's me. Aurelia. And you should really go away now. Don't you see that I'm naked?"

Marcus just blinked at me, frowning. "You aren't Aurelia. 'Relia is my sister. She looks like a funny hobgoblin."

"That's a rather hurtful thing to say," I scolded my brother. Really, was that what our parents let him get away with in polite company? I knew they had dropped me like a failed experiment. - But I had hoped they would still show at least a token effort in preserving my honor. Or maybe it was that ghastly governess' fault. "But I assure you that I am in fact Aurelia Morus, your sister. I've used magic to make myself better. That's why I look different. With enough dedication everything is possible when you have magic. You should know that. And now GO." Since the door was still open and despite all my efforts Marcus was still standing there, staring at me, I summoned my dress with telekinesis. The spell was as effortless as ever, I seemed to have recovered my mana reserves while I was unconscious. I tried standing up once more, this time more carefully and marveled at my perfectly symmetrical, perfectly normal legs. There was hardly any blood on my skin. Most likely it had been directly absorbed by the spell. I pulled the dress over my head and closed the shoulder clasps. I noticed that it was a little on the short side now but at least I was wearing something.

Marcus, the little disobedient child, hadn't left. No, he had walked towards me, staring up at my face in concentration. "Hm. Maybe you're really 'Relia. You look like mother and your nose looks like 'Relia's. But you have dragon eyes. People don't have dragon eyes."

I blinked in confusion. 'Dragon eyes' didn't sound like anything that had been part of my plans. I had already opened my mouth to ask Marcus to clarify when his attention seemed to shift away from me. His eyes widened and fear returned to his face. "That's Ciaran!" he exclaimed. "Why is he lying there? He's... he's dead, isn't he?" Marcus started to cry in terrible heaving sobs.

I really hadn't wanted my brother to see this. And seeing him so upset... I had thought he might be scared but... who was I fooling? Of course he would cry about Ciaran. Who wouldn't? He might have been just a slave but he had been good to everyone. And I had killed him. Marcus' exclamation drove the fact home like a sledgehammer. Ciaran was gone. He would never again bring me a cup of tea knowing exactly when I needed it. He would never again sit with me listening to me when I ranted about people, mused over research, feared for the future. Because of me.

I had to stop thinking about it. The deed was done. I had made the choice knowing that it came with the burden of guilt. What mattered most was that I had triumphed over nature's cruelty.

"Yes," I snapped coldly. "Ciaran is dead. That's why I didn't want you here. Death isn't for children."

For a moment Marcus stared at me, eyes wide and teary, clearly shocked by my harsh reply. But still he didn’t leave. “But WHY is he dead?” And even through his sniffles Marcus’ voice was still full of an innocent need to understand.

“He…” I started. _He was old. He slipped on the tiles._ I couldn’t say it. I had killed another human being. Someone who loved me. And yet I couldn’t tell a simple lie. Involuntarily my eyes turned to the dagger lying on the tiles not far from Ciaran’s lifeless body. It was deceptively clean, due to its enchantments no doubt. Nonetheless it was unmistakably a ritual blade. Marcus followed my gaze. And child that he was he had still been raised on stories of the mage lord ancestors of old and their great yet terrible deeds. Even his naïve mind drew the connection with ease.

“You… you did this?! Relia, why did you do something… so… bad?” he sounded lost and terrified. It was awful to listen to, and I didn’t have the nerves to spare to truly explain or to console him, or to deal with anything of this.

I turned towards Marcus and met his eyes with a harsh glare, “What I did wasn’t ‘bad’. It was glorious!”

Perhaps it was my anger, perhaps it was the fact that I didn't deny his accusations but suddenly his fear of the situation seemed to turn into fear of me. For a moment he stared at me with a terror-struck gaze, then he turned on his heels and ran away.

I watched him go, with a heavy feeling in my chest. My stupid little brother now saw me as a monster. But I wasn't. I wasn't. Was I?


End file.
